Uber how to reshape America's taxi industry?

Reading] Uber's expansion has sparked a lot of controversy, but the efficient Internet model has led to improved service quality and efficiency. Tencent Science and Technology long song February 21 compiled when the tick-tock taxi and quick taxi subsidy battle is escalating, the ocean on the other side of the United States taxi market, Uber a single big also caused a lot of controversy. However, the use of taxis in the traditional mode of subversion has become irreversible. The latest issue of the US Bloomberg Businessweek interviewed American taxi drivers. Taxi drivers said that Uber from the traditional cab industry for resources, the peak price increases also caused some users dissatisfaction. But it is undeniable that a more efficient Internet model has improved service quality and efficiency. The following is the full report: Rey Makovich (Raymarkovich) shut down a poorly managed mobile phone store 3 years ago and drove a taxi in Chicago. The job is not comfortable, it doesn't make much money-he pays 400 dollars for the 2011 white-winged Tiger every week. It is not difficult to imagine that this is a tedious job. But now it seems no longer monotonous. Last June, Markovic walked into the local Uber office, a taxi technology start-up company from San Francisco. Uber explained to him for one hours, giving him a free iphone with a preloaded Uber, and a brace for fixing the iphone on the windshield, and Markovic on the road. Since then, Markovic has been "blamed" for the fact that he has always been able to receive a visitor from the Chicago fashion community through Uber e-mails, and the traditional taxi driver's business has plummeted. Not only that, in order to retain Markovic such drivers, Uber also gave a lot of benefits and concessions. Markovic not only increased his income by 20%, he also grew up with his passengers. "None of the smartphone users under the age of 40 will run out and wave a taxi," he said. He said, "If you can't beat them, join them." "A scramble for future traffic hegemony is unfolding," he said. Uber and a growing number of well-funded start-ups are trying to improve their services, hoping to make the taxi process as simple as ordering on the OpenTable or looking at the price on Amazon-simply by using a smartphone. With the influx of venture capital in Silicon Valley, the ambitions of these companies are further inflated: they even want to completely discourage people from buying their own cars. Not only are they competing fiercely with each other, they are also fighting and confronting city regulators, vested interests in the traditional taxi industry and critics of the road. Some argue that the success of these companies is not glamorous, as they circumvent various laws and regulations designed to protect public safety. Uber CEO Travis Kalanik, 37, said: "We are in the front of the taxi industry, as the target, this feeling is not good." The taxi industry had been doing it decades earlierReady to meet the reform, but until now, technology has finally turned the dream into reality. "About four years ago, Uber came up with the idea of getting users to call the nearest electric car with smartphones and then tracking the process on the map as they went to the destination." After the taxi is over, the service will automatically pay the driver's subsidy through the customer's credit card information, no need to give a separate tip. The experience was simple and enjoyable, eliminating the hassle of a taxi at the curb. Uber has financed 307 million of billions of dollars from agencies and individuals such as Google (Weibo) VCs and Amazon CEO Bezos (Bezos). They are operating in 70 cities around the world, with revenues expected to exceed 1 billion dollars in 2013. This February alone, Uber marched into cities such as Dubai, Honolulu, Lyon, Manila, Milwaukee, Pittsburg, Tucson, and Durban. Love and hate interweave throughout the process, Uber has become the most hated and intertwined start-up in the smartphone age. Users indulge in its reliability and rapidity, but complain that its price is soaring-because Uber will be able to take a hike when demand is high. In addition, it has been banned in places like Miami and Austin, where regulators want to protect the interests of users and traditional businesses. In Boston and Chicago, taxi operators have even sued the government, accusing them of not regulating companies such as Uber, which have caused them to depreciate their operating licences for expensive purchases. In Paris, the worst of all, angry taxi drivers have even closed off the motorway exits leading to the main airport, blocking urban traffic. Kalanik that the taxi industry is still using the "Trade protection mechanism". In his view, these mechanisms protect not taxi drivers, but taxi companies, "they simply do not want to start any competition, just want to maintain the status quo." But his opponents have no weakness. They accuse Uber of endangering passenger safety by letting untested cars on the road, and even accusing Uber of cutting prices just to stifle competition. And a Uber driver killed San Francisco's 6-Year-old girl in the course of the accident, but also put the company on the cusp. "I want to do everything I can to keep these guys out of business, and that's my mission," said a member of the San Francisco Taxi Association. But Kalanik has a different view, in his view, Uber can both liberate the driver, but also can liberate the passenger. He had previously founded a streaming media company called Redswoosh, but the idea was far ahead of the times. Kalanik revealed that he had not paid for years before selling the company to AkamaiTechnologies in 2007. "Imagine that I have been rejected hundreds of times a day for 6 consecutive years." "When you have this experience, you are sure to be a strong person," he said. You can't stick to it unless you have a strong belief. "To remind myself not to forget the hard times, Kalanik on a pair of socks."Bleeding, sweating, eating bubble noodles. He used the cover of the novel Thefountainhead as his Twitter head. Yes, he likes that book, but he doesn't admit that the protagonist Rand is his spiritual idol. Sheven Pischevaux, a venture capitalist who had invested in early Uber, Shervinpishevar that Kalanik was "an empire Builder who wanted to change the world." Kalanik with friends Garrett Camp (Garrettcamp) co-founded Uber, the latter has previously founded Online content recommendation Tool StumbleUpon. Their idea is simple: to provide users with convenience. "I'll order a button, and then there will be a car to pick me up." I'm actually a pimp. Kalanik once described his vision to his colleagues. Competitive upgrades like other big cities, San Francisco has already limited the number of taxis, but the local population has increased by 300,000 over the past 10 years. The dispatchers of large taxi companies do not seem to care whether passengers are satisfied, as their main source of income is the charging of vehicle rents to drivers. David Ottor, a professor of economics at MIT, Davidautor that the industry is characterized by "high prices, poor service, no responsibility." It's long overdue for startups to mess up, because everyone hates the industry. By the beginning of 2012, Uber had marched into 6 cities, with rivals such as Sidecar and Lyft emerging. Inspired by the Kalanik, the two companies took the idea further and allowed all the drivers in the car to be soliciting with smartphones. Lyft asked the driver to post a pink beard logo on the car inlet, John Zemo Johnzimmer, the company's president, said they had 1 million deals in the first year and 1 million more after 3 months. People familiar with the situation say they are now in 20 cities and are raising more than 80 million of billions of dollars in hopes of further expansion. Kalanik said the emergence of Lyft and Sidecar was a turning point. He has been trying to get legal status for Uber's electric car service. While aware that competitors are actively using the fuzzy positioning of such enterprises, he also faced Toyota Prius and other middle-end car owners launched a competitive carpool service UberX. Uber also tried to poach rival drivers, who often sent sales reps to sit on their rivals ' cars and attract drivers with cash and free refueling cards. In New York, Uber employees deliberately slowed the response of rival Gett, even through large-scale orders and withdrawals. Uber apologized for this January. "This sales strategy is too extreme," the company spokeswoman said in an official blog. Jugen Chepat (URGENSHERPA) drives a Toyota Camry to work for Gett. He recently received a Uber message: ifHe could be offered 1250 dollars for a job change, or 50 dollars if "just sit in their office". Gett later sent text messages to his drivers, apologizing for the harassment, but also declared: "We are at war with Uber." But Chepat said some of his colleagues chose to switch jobs. The Uber will temporarily increase the price in the rush hour. For example, on a recent day, Uber announced to users in New York that they would double their service charges temporarily because of high demand. In fact, the double cost is not the most exaggerated situation, there is a higher time. The company did not specifically disclose their pricing strategy, saying only that they would use algorithms to determine whether a particular area was in short supply. But this pattern has made passengers miserable. Jerryseinfeld, the wife of American comedian Jerry Seinfeld, recently posted a 415-dollar Uber bill on Instagram, and she was on the day to send her children to a social event at night. There are a number of people who have experienced similar experiences, many of which have expressed dissatisfaction with Uber's "slaughter" behavior. Kalanik The Uber's pricing strategy as a patient and dignified father. The logic of the model, he says, is very simple and fully in line with the economics principle: Uber must persuade more drivers to go on the road and make sure more vehicles are available to meet demand. In off-peak hours, if the uber charge 10 dollars, the driver will probably get 8 dollars (excluding taxes). At the peak, the price will be four times times the original--which happens frequently during holidays or bad weather--with a total cost of $40 and a driver who can get 32 dollars. "We've been using fixed prices since the age of carriages hundreds of years ago. "It is impossible for people to enjoy absolutely reliable service at a fixed price," he said. Economists generally agree with Kalanik's analysis. Ian Savitch, a professor of economics at Northwestern University, said: "We have to regulate the price of taxis in the past because when you call a car or queue at a taxi stop, you have to take the first car and you can't know the price in advance." You might get slaughtered. But Uber will tell them the price before the user gets on the bus. There is another problem with traditional taxis: when you really need it, it's often hard to hit the car. Henry Fabel, an economist at Princeton University, Henryfarber in a 2003 paper that New York taxi drivers come home from work every day after earning a goal. By common sense, when business is better on rainy days, taxi drivers should have pulled as many business as possible. Fabel, however, found that taxi drivers in New York were more likely to stabilize their income every day rather than make a fortune while the opportunity was good. If the weather is bad, not only will the number of people who take taxis increase, but the supply will shrink as well: Because taxi drivers can reach their income targets faster and return home from work earlier.The temporary increase may bring enough money to the drivers to keep them on the road. Bloomberg Businessweek interviewed more than 10 drivers of taxi applications in 4 cities, some of whom feared that Uber would alienate users because of occasional ground-price hikes. But almost everyone admits that they would be more willing to continue providing services during the peak hours. "If I don't have anything else to do, but I find that the price is soaring, I will go out and pick up the job." "UberX, the driver of San Francisco," said Samir. Samir is not sympathetic to the plight of traditional taxi operators. Before Uber, he recalls, they would often wait for hours in the garage and have nothing to do but wait for dispatchers to send their own orders. "That's what they deserve." "he said. Security issues One Night, Shanghuan (Huankuang, transliteration) and her two children were knocked down by a UberX Honda SUV at a crosswalk in the San Francisco Tenderloin community. Her daughter, Sofia Liu (Sofialiu), was killed and her 5-year-old son, Anthony Anthony, was also seriously injured, and the driver Saidi Muzafa (Syedmuzaffar) was arrested and charged with manslaughter. Shanghuan, who sued Uber in January this year, argues that because Uber's dispatch application distracts Muzafa's attention, it should also assume a certain responsibility. Chrisdolan, their lawyer, said Shanghuan was ready to testify in court when she saw the Chris Dolin on the driver's face. In a statement issued after the death of Sofia, Uber said the company was not responsible for the accident because the MUZAFA was not manned and was not serviced by the Uber system at the time of the accident. All enterprises providing similar services will install some kind of technology equipment on the central console to complete the dispatch. Similar accidents may occur in courier trucks. And when it comes to the possibility of distracting drivers, Kalanik replied: "The technology Uber offers partners is far more secure than the taxi industry's technology." "However, Uber's critics have seized on the opportunity to require regulators to reassess the operational qualifications of such companies." They say traditional taxi companies may not hire people like Muzafa because he was punished for reckless driving in Florida 10 years ago. But Uber said the company's background checks were more thorough than traditional rivals. In a blog post on February 13, Uber said they would improve existing processes and include government records in the scope of the review. But some drivers privately say they suspect the company did not conduct regular background checks before the accident. The same week, the Chicago Tribune found that a Uber driver pleaded guilty in a felony charge in 2010. Uber later dismissed the contract and admitted that he had not been hired. has been firmly opposed to Uber's New York Taxi Association before"People are finally waking up: Oh, they didn't do background checks," said Matthew Dawes, chairman of the Matthewdaus. "Hostile sentiment Billy Kun (Billycunha) is a sports referee, in the off-season will also be engaged in the maintenance of ski resorts." This year, with too little snow in Northern California, he put a pink beard on his black Jetta and became a signing driver for Lyft. A few weeks ago, Kun-ha followed a yellow taxi on the road to San Francisco, but was blocked by the other, making it difficult to drive into the right lane. The taxi driver may have to pay thousands of dollars a month for "dollar Money", and Kun ha did not pay a penny, but can share the same passengers with him. Many drivers say they are now going to the airport to hide Uber's phone or Lyft's beard stickers to avoid angering traditional taxi drivers. But for an expanding industry, this is not a long-term solution. If they are to realize their dreams, these companies must ease the current hostility. Kalanik often mentions the establishment of a dense Uber car network in all cities and then uses the network to distribute parcels and takeout. (The company has been distributing flowers during Valentine's Day.) Uber may someday allow other businesses to use their networks. "Once you get a car in 5 minutes, you can send a lot of other things in 5 minutes," he said. "Kalanik said. Lyft also wants to build a global network of passengers travelling in similar directions. Such a system can greatly reduce the purchase demand of private cars and reduce the demand for parking spaces. Zemo even wants to use unmanned vehicle technology. "One day, there may be only passengers left in the car. "he said. These visions seem to have become an inevitable trend in the transportation industry, but they are also like a hype in Silicon Valley. A Uber driver in San Francisco said he was tired of the pattern, but there was no better alternative. "I can't give it up because the traditional taxi industry is really bad," he said. "Keith Laskin, Keith Raskin, who has been driving for Uber for several years, said.